[Elecraft] K3 CW Text Decoding

Tue Oct 8 10:14:10 EDT 2019

Dave,
     Your last comment is correct. However, CW Skimmer comes into its own 
when you feed it IF I&Q data. You can see what is happening across the 
band or a portion of it and still read the signal narrow band. You do 
this by clicking on the signal you want to pursue and and listen in 
narrow band. By clicking on the wanted signal, the radio is tuned to it. 
This does require a little set up and setting offsets, but it is really 
worth it. A little interesting point: in a little less than rigorous 
testing, I found that that Skimmer seems to work a bit better using I&Q 
data rather than just the receiver audio. But, that was not a rigorous 
test and someone who is really interested can do the follow up.

73,
Barry
K3NDM

------ Original Message ------
From: "David Gilbert" <xdavid at cis-broadband.com>
To: "rich hurd WC3T" <rich at wc3t.us>
Cc: elecraft at mailman.qth.net
Sent: 10/8/2019 12:23:13 AM
Subject: Re: [Elecraft] K3 CW Text Decoding

>
>If you haven't played with CW Skimmer much, here's a couple of points of interest.
>
>1.  You can run multiple instances.  I fed the Line Out from my K3 into the sound card of my computer, and had one instance of CW SKimmer display a waterfall of the narrow band audio from the main receiver and another instance of CW Skimmer display the narrow band audio from the sub receiver.  You'd be amazed at how distinct the dits and dahs look compared to just about every other waterfall application I've ever seen.  You can shrink the vertical display height of both instances of CW Skimmer to make them fit above your logging program on a decent sized monitor.  Imagine being able to pick out the callsign of a station on VFO B while you are focused on working somebody on VFO A ... even if he gave his callsign several seconds before you looked at the VFO B waterfall.
>
>2.  There is a command that will pause the CW Skimmer waterfall. It's a toggle ... hit it once to pause and hit it again to restart. I don't remember the command off the top of my head but I remember mapping it to a key on the keyboard using the outstanding free application called AutoHotKey.  I didn't have to use it very often, but any time I blew a received report I'd just tap that key and it would let me visually decode whatever I busted and correct it after the contact, and since the display was paused I could do it when it was convenient.
>
>3.  If you turn off the decode in CW Skimmer it is simply a waterfall and qualifies for unassisted categories, but the visual display cuts you a lot of slack for human decoding.  Just read the dots and dashes in your mind as dits and dahs and you'd be surprised how quickly you learn to decode visually ... except now you have a "do over" capability to help you out, or alternatively have a brief record of whatever is happening on one VFO while you are active on the other.   It's almost like turning one operator into one and a half operators.
>
>4.  You don't need ANY additional hardware to use CW Skimmer in audio mode.
>
>73,
>Dave   AB7E
>
>
>
>On 10/7/2019 7:26 PM, rich hurd WC3T wrote:
>>Just be sure you give it a fair shake after you install it. I installed it and sort of played with it unseriously.  Then when I really started to dive into it, I discovered the 30 day timer had expired.  And I didn’t get a chance to justify to myself the expense.
>>
>>I’m now building a laptop for ham-only use and will reinstall it and try again.
>>
>>On Mon, Oct 7, 2019 at 22:04 David Gilbert <xdavid at cis-broadband.com <mailto:xdavid at cis-broadband.com>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>     CW Skimmer not only has a great decoder, it has the best waterfall
>>     display I've seen.  On top of that, the waterfall runs right to left
>>     like all narrowband waterfalls should so that you can read left to
>>     right
>>     to visually decode a CW signal several seconds after the fact if you
>>     miss a character when decoding by ear.  I have often used CW
>>     Skimmer in
>>     a CW contest in narrowband audio mode with decoding turned off for
>>     this
>>     purpose.  It works great and saves asking for repeats if you
>>     happened to
>>     miss an element.
>>
>>     I once proposed here in this reflector that it would be nice if
>>     the K4
>>     could have the option to do the same thing but all I heard back was
>>     crickets.
>>
>>     73,
>>     Dave   AB7E
>>
>>
>>
>>     On 10/7/2019 5:46 PM, Barry wrote:
>>     > Brian,
>>     >     It does work. But it usually takes a pretty good signal. I have
>>     > gone over to CW Skimmer as it appears to be t he best thing on the
>>     > street, better than most all of the others. I can contest with
>>     it at a
>>     > pretty good clip. The setup is slightly involved, but once set
>>     up it
>>     > really works well and can control the radio.
>>     >
>>     > 73,
>>     > Barry
>>     > K3NDM
>>
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>>-- 72,
>>Rich Hurd / WC3T / DMR: 3142737
>>Northampton County RACES, EPA-ARRL Public Information Officer for Scouting
>>Latitude: 40.761621 Longitude: -75.288988  (40°45.68' N 75°17.33' W) Grid: *FN20is*
>>
>
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